Iron fortified flour started in the USA early 1940's.
You will notice today that just about any store bought processed food is fortified with iron and other
nutrients. Some of the iron is in the form of ferrous sulfate/fumerate,other may be
metallic reduced iron.
Iron is also a limiting nutrient for bacteria.
Are we getting toooo much iron from the diet.
Here is one to start off with,I never saw this one before but it is scary.
Old Mikehttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18801890

0.1mg/liter

Here is a table from the gov.http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/iro...hProfessional/
Looks like adult females need 18 mg while males need 8.
I serving of 100% fortified cereal = 100% required non heme iron
for an adult female.
Looks like about 10% is absorbed.
What happens to the other 90% I think it goes into the colon,some could go into urine,not sure.
They made me hunt again,looks like the 90% goes out in the poo. So if it is in the poo
then the bacteria can get at it, and it can also cause oxidation.http://jn.nutrition.org/content/53/3/351.full.pdf
So if you eat a lot of processed fortifed snack foods,you are getting a lot of iron. Natural foods not so much.
In the above water report there only talking about 0.1mg increase,
cant seem to find the absolute amount of iron in the water though.
But one bowl of fully fortified cereal is 18mg.
They made me hunt.It looks like the average is 0.3mg/liter from water,most iron intake is
from food. But this above study was only talking about 0.1mg increase.http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_...icals/iron.pdf

Some studies have tried iron depletion against mycobacteria, they tend to adapt. I have asked and wondered about what the iron infusions would do to the patient who is infected with mycobacteria, most said it's likely that it has some effect, but iron depletion is first impossible, and second, mycobacteria are incredibly good at iron regulation, they can't cure animals by iron depleting them (and many studies tried), I'll find some if I can remember them.

Also, this is why I think the SCD diet makes very little sense, mycobacteria involved in chron are iron bacteria, SCD is targeting sugar.

It is not just about iron depleting for MAP there are other things going on such as oxidation due the Fenton reaction.
As far as the SCD is concerned, it is not just about suger,that may be part of the theory,but if you were to get off bread and processed foods you iron load would drop. Plus as you can see from one of the studies,adding iron to a diet
causes a change in the bacterial types in the gut.
The first study concerning the iron content of drinking water is quite interesting.
Old Mike

What I know is that when there's an infection, the body does lots of things to prevent iron from getting to pathogens.

It starts to decrease how much iron is absorbed in the intestinal wall, it starts to store more of it in ferritin so bacteria can't get to it, it uses lactoferrin and transferrin to capture free iron, and it positions transferrin on places of infection.

In Crohn patients they see very high lactoferrin in stool, but I don't know what it's from, if it's from an immune response or if it has anything to do with pathogens.

Interaction of lactoferrin with immune system cells induces a regulated release of cytokines, such as interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha[19], which has also been observed during acute Shigella infection in adults[20,21] and children.
Fecal lactoferrin has been reported as a promising biomarker in active Crohn’s disease[22] and ulcerative colitis[23], requiring the exclusion of patients enrolled with a history of the above IBDs. Indeed, in patients without known IBDs suspected of having a bacterial diarrheal illness, fecal lactoferrin may be useful in evaluating bacterial gastrointestinal infections in which antimicrobial therapy may be prescribed (e.g., Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, and pathogenic Escherichia coli spp.) and aid in following the inflammatory activity of bacterial infection.

full link of one you linked, most doctors have no clue what they're doing, iron is given out like candy to CD patients, been saying for a while that iron is bad in excess, it's the same thing with aluminium oxide in tooth pastes, they know some pathogens have adapted and are using it as fuel

This one is interesting the old 1940's use of p-aminosalicylate (PAS)
is an iron chelator, also suspect the 5-aminosalicylates in use today also
may have some iron chelation capacity.PAS early on was used for IBD.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14670352

the theory is almost plausible, but i would think ibd would be more widespread if it was due to something as ubiquitous as iron fortified foods, less then 1% of the entire united states has ibd. id be willing to bet about 90% of the country has been repeatedly exposed to iron fortified foods in their entire lifetimes, that should add up to alot more cases of ibd , so it seems like an insignificant factor to me.

i see your added studies of how iron makes experimental ibd worse, that may not mean iron itself is the cause of ibd, but the nature of the inflammatory process and its relation to iron metabolism. whenever we encounter an infection that leads to inflammation our bodys tend to create free unbound iron which causes more oxidative damage to our body , this is a result of its attempt to keep iron away from a bacteria since it is so universally utilized by bacteria to grow on, it is a sort of defense against pathogens. so taking extra iron during an inflammatory event, can contribute to having more free iron in your system which can cause more damage.

i personally believe that through a low fiber diet and antibiotics, we have eliminated bacteria from our guts that helps protect us from transient bacterial pathogens in our environment and this relationship can explain the on and off flares people experiance as they pick up these pathogens from the environment, they create a greater challenge for our bodies then most people, who would otherwise have a short bout of diarhea, or no symptoms at all. more severe cases of ibd may have more severe disordering of the bacteria, leading to an almost absolute inability to eradicate these environmental pathogens, and have more severe flares or never achieve remission.

Wildbill: Have to also believe there is of course a genetic component,where
only certain people get IBD. Actually my main interest in the iron connection was with the water supply study,which started me on this track. But never the less I still find it interesting that many processed foods are loaded with extra iron.
The one study next to last where the fed iron fortified food, it caused a great disturbance in the gut bacteria population. A shift towards a more pathogenic population and inflammation.
IBD is also a disease of western populations and seemingly concentrated in cities. Cities use a lot of iron water pipes. That being said iron is just one
more confounding factor to the unsolved puzzle.
Another puzzle is that many are put into remission for Crohn's using enteral feeding or elemental diet. These diets do have some iron in them. When placed back on a normal diet in some the disease will manifest again.
These diets dont contain corn,wheat,rye,or other allergins. These diets also
change the bacterial mix in the gut. If it is just MAP causing the disease then why remission,due to a change in food supply.
I am also thinking that back in the 1920's/30's when people started to eat canned goods,that the cans were not lined very well, and they perhaps also did not use a lot of stainless steel or aluminum for manufacturing processed foods.thus lots of leaching of iron into foods. Prior to the 40's/50's probably not a lot of copper pipes in the house either.
With enteral diets the low fat is the best for remission, which is another
peiece of the puzzle.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12560759

Low fat is too simplistic. Lower LCFA I could buy, but I wonder about how MCFA and SCFA plays into that scenario. Considering the treatment for diversion colitis is an enema of SCFA and studies have also shown the benefits of butyrate for IBD, I think we need to be careful not to lump the various fats into "fat".

In the fat study they used long chain fat,most fat we eat will be long chain,except for those
of us who eat coconut oil.
As far as iron in tap water the water on my street is only 0.027mg/L so iron from tap water
would not seem to be my problem with UC. But it does have 17mg/L sulfate which perhaps
is another story. Sounds low but who knows,difficult to research sulfate and UC,not much out there. Except of course we know that they induce colitis using
DSS,other sulfonic acids and that Carrageenan might be a problem, in addition
possibly exess sulfur amino acids from protein,added sulfate and sulfite in foods,sulfate reducing bacteria,perhaps even cruciferous veggies,don't know on the veggies. Then we have sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0916103144.htm

I still have great interest in the iron connection.
This is a really comprehensive paper, they don't talk much about the
small intestine, since they indicate that not all that much is known about
what is going on with the gut bugs, in the small intestine.
Anyhow I knew that lacto bacteria did not need iron, but did not know they
use manganese, as does the lyme bacteria.
I also imagine AIEC uses iron. Another main point is that dietary iron
will increase bacteria virulence.
Anyhow a good read.
Old Mike

this trial of iron fortification is a bit scary, makes me wonder when they determined the iron levels for anemia were the test people already over fortified, or used iron water pipes or pots,well water.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20962160

Reminds me of this paper I read a few years back of a guy who treats various horse ailments with gallium nitrate. He somehow stumbled on the idea to also administer a diluted solution to a woman suffering from Crohn's. Within days of starting treatment she started feeling better, and after a couple months of treatment, had remarkable improvement and was able to come off all medication. Apparently the gallium stops reproduction of iron-dependent bacteria. He lists a whole host of species the solution can kill off, including mycobacterium, escheria, ysernia, lysteria, and many more.

Who knows, if the iron theory mentioned in this thread holds, maybe this guy's onto something?

Yes I remember this well.
I think I will revisit and do some literature searching to see what I can come up with.
You never know what you might find, for instance the lyme pathogen does not use iron,
but manganese, but they have also found that claratin blocks uptake.
Also this guy is correct that lacto/probiotics don't use iron,at least some of them.
Old Mike

Your body will sequester iron when you have an infection to keep the bacteria from using it. I have read of a study where mice that had septicemia were split into 2 groups; 1 were given iron supplementation and the 2nd group was not. The iron supplemented group had a significantly higher death rate. I'll have to see if I can find that paper.
Iron Sequestration: http://iai.asm.org/content/81/10/3503.full